Agrarian realism is a mode not much practiced by Western filmmakers, perhaps because it's so unremittingly hard, bleak and sad as it looks at lives crushed by labor and the gigantic indifference of nature. That's certainly true of the brilliant if difficult-to-bear Chinese film "Tuya's Marriage," set on the Mongolian plains.

Tuya's husband has lost the use of his legs, leaving the poor young woman to raise two kids and herd the sheep in a yurt in the center of nowhere. But Tuya (played by Yu Nan) is a hero: She wants to do little except her duty to her family. The breaking point is her own spine; it can no longer support her in her labors. The answer is an amiable divorce, so that her ex-husband can live with his sister and her new husband can support the kids, the goats and Tuya. Everybody agrees it's for the best. Everybody except Tuya, who insists that she should remarry and her new husband support her invalid ex! Women of Tuya's beauty and decency being in short supply, she is soon entertaining a series of suitors.

Quanan Wang's Berlin International Film Festival winner is short on style but long on truth. These poor peasants work like dogs for only a marginal sustenance, yet their spirit is unquenchable, their optimism endless. It's not a great movie, but Yu Nan's performance is superb without being showy or melodramatic.

-- Stephen Hunter (July 18, 2008)

Contains adult themes. In Mandarin with English subtitles.